Balanced
by typedamon
Summary: "I liked not caring." - Elena and Damon have a conversation about humanity which leads to a heart-warming revelation. Set after 5x09 whilst locked up in the cells. A series of DE drabbles.
1. Balanced

A/N: This is a little something (a good deal of fluff) that just popped into my brain. As always, please forgive me for any silly mistakes, I try to smooth things out so it's perfect, but after all I'm only human! I really hope you enjoy this - it's just a conversation that I would find idyllic for them to have, and whilst they are locked up together, there wouldn't be a better opportunity.

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Balanced

"Why'd you turn it back on?" Elena asked softly, surveying Damon carefully as he dropped to the floor beside her, his left shoulder leaning against the bars that separated them.

For a long time, Damon didn't answer. Elena actually began to wonder if he had even heard her question, until he cleared his throat. The sound and movement was laboured, as if it were a physical struggle for him to swallow and get his words out. All Elena wanted to do was force her way through the cold bars that kept them apart and hold him. As he slowly raised his impossibly blue eyes from where they had been settled on the floor, Elena found that they couldn't quite meet her own. Instead, they lingered uncertainly on her face, occasionally flitting a little from left to right as if he didn't know what to do with himself.

"It wasn't a... concious decision," Damon finally began, his voice oddly croaky in the silence of the cells. He paused uncomfortably. Elena waited patiently. Opening up had always been a struggle for Damon, and as much as she wished she could obliterate that barrier, she understood. Instead of rushing him with an answer, she remained quiet, allowing him to figure out the words in his own time. "I don't know how to explain!" Damon burst out, his voice bouncing off the stone walls and returning back to Elena's ears. His jaw tightened in frustration as words failed him.

Hesitantly, Elena gently probed further. "Was it because... you had a-a feeling that, I-I don't know -"

Damon's eyebrows twitched upward. "No, Elena. It wasn't because I had some sudden epiphany where I realised how wrong the things I was doing were. I _liked_ not caring." Damon licked his lips, cocking his head to one side, seemingly considering his words. "It was more like my switch was broken. I would try to keep it off, but it was always only a matter of time before it sprung back and slammed into me like a brick wall.

"Believe me, if I'd have been able to keep it off, I would have. I would've have never let myself experience the pain of feeling again. I wouldn't have worried about the monster I was becoming, because I just wouldn't have been able to care."

"How did you learn to cope?" Elena whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion as she stared into the bottomless eyes of the man she loved. "How did you not break every time you started to feel again?"

"I focused on the bad parts of myself. I let myself be hateful, seeking revenge on everyone who had been someone to hurt me. Every threat, I tried to eliminate." A faraway look seized Damon, making the colour of his eyes look even richer. As another silence grew, Elena watched the look deepen as he cast himself back into the past. For a moment, he was utterly still. In the stillness, it was easy to look at him and believe he was a picture of perfection, a motionless statue built of flesh and blood that was completely unfaultable. He was only half lit by a candle flame that flickered and danced in the corridor beyond their cell bars, so near, yet so out of reach.

All of a sudden, the misty, deep look in his eyes cleared. For the first time since Elena had plucked up the courage to ask him the question that had played on her mind the most, ice blue met doe brown. "That was why I hated you. You were a living copy of the only thing I wanted and the only thing that I couldn't have. Just by you being there, a constant reminder, you hurt me. I wanted to remove that pain. But being around you... it transformed me. It woke me up."

There was a tenderness in his voice, a husky softness that brushed across Elena's skin, drawing her closer to the bars that separated them. "Being near you, Elena, was like looking into a mirror. You were the parts of me that I was so out of touch with, the bits that I had left behind through fear. Your existence made me look at myself, showed me what I was doing wrong, made me acknowledge what I needed to fix."

Forcing her hand through the uncomfortable tight space between the bars that kept them apart, Elena's fingers laced through Damon's. Recognition had never been so sweet. The revelation of what she had before her, the intensity of the love that roared through her body like a burning flame was something that Elena never wanted to let go of. Because what she was for Damon, he was for her. He had opened her eyes to the importance of self value, the need for life, the fun of new experiences. He had put her back in touch with the fiery part of her soul, the engulfing, roaring beacon of life and passion that Elena had been before she lost her way.

They had put each other back together, piece by piece. When Damon next spoke, Elena could only squeeze his hand tightly in answer, her touch confirming that she felt exactly the same.

"And I could never be without you, because that would mean living without the other part of my soul."


	2. Damnation

A/N: I'm turning this into a DE drabble series, so here is another little piece from me. Again this was something that just materialised into my head after 5x10, so if you haven't watched the mid-season finale yet, don't read this chapter! Also if you have any questions about this, just ask me since this isn't actually my perception of Damon but how I believe he thinks of himself and his thought process leading up to his very soul destroying ultimatum for Elena.

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Damnation

_I can't be selfish with you._

That's what he had once told her, amidst an onslaught of wild emotion as he openly admitted his passions for her before he wiped the memory from her mind. But he had lied to her. He'd been so wrong. Sat on his bed with his hands curled into shaking fists as he struggled to breathe around the enormous lump that had formed in his throat, Damon Salvatore found himself breaking. The truth of the matter was simply that he had been selfish with her. Unintentionally, yes, but he had been so unbelievably selfish. And he was only just realising it.

To allow Elena, so pure and righteous, to fall in love with _him_, had been the most horrific, moral crime he could have committed in his life. He didn't deserve her love. He was a monster. No matter how much he tried to change himself for her, to be the better man, he did bad things. He enjoyed it. It was just who he was, that unhinged, slightly insane vampire that couldn't get over the horrors of his past, that revelled in hurting others, that _lived_ for chaos and lunacy. Him, Damon Salvatore, certified monster.

She had remained shockingly loyal, screaming in terror as a bullet thudded into his skull even after he'd admitted lying to her and slaughtering innocent people... Murdering the descendants of the old Whitmore family in cold blood, when he should have been sleeping, Elena safely wrapped up in his arms. That was what terrified Damon the most. Since her transition, he had inadvertently dragged her perilously close to the borders of psychosis, transforming her into something that she wasn't. Whilst it didn't seem so bad when it had been happening, the acknowledgement of it shook him to his very core. He had fallen in love with Elena because he was everything she wasn't. She was the side of him that he had left behind with his human self, the things that were pure and good, laced in gold and innocence. Now, when she was so close to simply accepting his transgressions, all Damon could do was recognise how _wrong_ that was.

Unable to simply remain sitting, he began pacing the width of his room, his mind whirring at a pace so rapid it made his skull scream in agony. Even after all this time, he lived in constant fear that one day Elena would wake up and realise who he really was. And when she did, Damon was painfully aware of the fact that she would bolt from him, terrified and disgusted. Furious with himself for letting her get so deep under his skin, Damon left his room.

After being selfish with her for so long, for holding her tight, for unwittingly desensitizing her to everything monstrous that he was, that he found himself realising he had to do the most selfless thing that could be done. He was letting her go. He _loved_ her. So much. Too much. It was because he loved her, that he couldn't hurt her just by being himself. His entire body went icy as he truly acknowledged what he was about to go and say to her.

He was a beast. A monster. He killed people. And what's more... he _liked_ it. He couldn't stay with her, worrying about if he was hurting simply because of the way he was. And he couldn't change her, make her into something she wasn't. She was the only person in the world that he couldn't be cruel to.

Fetching the mug of tea she had drowsily requested on her return to the boarding house, Damon paused outside the extravagant lounge, closing his eyes and forcing his thundering heart to slow down. When he was confident he had gained some control over his emotions, he entered the sitting room. Elena was sitting with her knees hunched up, a battered journal resting against her legs, her forehead slightly creased as she poured over the words that had been written by her father. As she snagged him in her vision, Damon went to her, acting as if there had been no hesitation in his movement at all.

"It's weird," she began, frowning in thought as Damon lowered himself onto the coffee table, offering her the mug of hot tea. "even as a kid, there was something about that basement that creeped me out."

"You sure you want to give yourself nightmares reading that thing?" Damon asked, concerned as always for her well being. He mentally shook himself, reminding that he had come to her to do something significant and important, to not get caught up by her, to keep himself at some length from her.

He watched as Elena drank from the mug, preparing himself for what he wanted to say. Before he had a chance to even open his mouth, she was speaking again. "No, I remember my dad talking about this little girl," she paused momentarily as she placed the mug back on the coffee table. She shuffled in her seat as she continued speaking. "I think he was talking about my room-mate, Megan. Look," Elena flipped a couple of pages of the journal and began reading from it. "January, 1999. Saw Megan King today. Megan is seven years old. She suffers from a heart defect with the life expectancy of two months. A single injection of vampire blood seems to be a life saving solution." A half smile crossed Elena's face as she ended the sentence on a slight breathless note that Damon knew was a sense of relief. He blinked at her in disbelief as she continued. "That's why Megan had a picture of my dad in her phone, 'cause he saved her life!"

Damon suppressed the urge to snort. "A hundred pages of horrific torture, and you find the one happy passage." Damon narrowed his eyes, unable to look Elena as he half nodded. It was just so _her_. To find a redeeming quality, something that means all the transgressions weren't in vain.

"He used his research, to _save_ people, Damon." Elena said brightly, closing the journal. "Children, families-"

"Yeah, and dissected vampires along the way," Damon interjected, unable to help himself. Elena cocked her head, considering his words. "news flash, Elena. You are a vampire. I mean, do you honestly think he would sit here and see you as anything more?"

Elena shook her head. "I don't know... but he's my dad. I can't _not_ defend him."

Damon stiffened at her words. He got up, turning his back on her and moving away. It was incredible how she was the one thing he cherished, yet at the same time she could be the bane of his life. "No, I know you can't," Damon said sarcastically before his voice dropped to a quieter, more sensitive tone. "because you do it for me, all the time."

"I'm not defending you." Elena's voice rang out, loud and clear from behind him. He remained stiff and still, letting her words penetrate him. "I'm not defending your decision to kill Aaron's entire family, to go out of town and kill his aunt... while we were still together." Was that a note of disgust in her voice? Another expectation for him to the be the better man, the person that he wasn't?

Damon turned to stare at her, his face scrunching in exasperation as all his earlier thoughts rushed from his lips. "So why are you still here? I'm bad, Elena, I am _bad_ for you!" Elena's eyebrows lifted as she rolled her eyes at him, almost as if she'd been expecting it. Impervious to her, Damon continued, struggling to understand her as his frustration mounted to a new level. "So why, when you've run away from me as far as humanly possible-"

Elena slammed the journal down onto the coffee table as she rose, walking defiantly towards him. "Because I love you Damon, because I choose you, because I stand by my choice."

Damon shook his head, unable to meet her eyes. He couldn't comprehend, how through every bad thing he'd done, she could still look at him and say it was genuine meaning. It wasn't right. It wasn't her. Finding the courage to look up, he met her confused brown eyes. "Well now I'm choosing." Elena drew back, her jaw dropping slightly. Pain shot through Damon's soul. "And I'm choosing to let you go."

"What?" Elena echoed, her eyes filling with tears. She stared at him, searching in the vain hope that in somehow what he was saying wasn't true. The hurt that emanated from those doe brown eyes attacked Damon. It was all he could do to not bolt from the room, to run away in fear from what was unravelling before him. It was because he loved her, that he couldn't just walk out of her life. He owed her an explanation. "No, Damon-"

"I am choosing to not have to _think_ about how you must feel every time a ghost from my past comes into our life." Damon let the words rush out of him, filling the space has he surprised Elena into a ringing silence. Her jaw dropped as Damon's voice raised once again, his words harsh and brutal. "I am choosing to _relieve _you of having to defend me for every _awful_ thing I've ever done!"

"Stop acting like I'm perfect! Damon, I've done horrible things too!" Elena backed away from him as Damon turned from her. Already, a chasm was building between the two of them as Elena desperately tried to think of some useless way to justify the things he had done. "You think I'm going to stand here and judge you after I find out you've been tortured for five years?"

"_STOP DEFENDING ME!_" Damon exploded, his temper finally reaching boiling point. Breathing heavily, he shook his head at Elena, struggling to get a hold of his fiery emotions. "I'm not going to change who I am." He paused, the impact of his words truly hitting him for the first time. As much as he wanted to be able to, it wasn't something he was in control of. "I can't." Elena stared at him, her face torn up between confusion and love. Even after what he had said to her, still, she loved him. It broke his heart. "But... I refuse to change you." Knowing how much he was hurting her killed him. Before he had a chance to hear her breakdown, he left the room wishing that an incessant buzzing could fill his ears and block out every sound. That a shutter could encase his mind and stop him from thinking, that some kind of barrier could block out his soul and stop him from _feeling. __  
_

Everything. All of it. He wanted it to cease to be, to not exist. To be able to not be worried about her, to not _feel _for her.

But when he had opened the doors of his heart so wide, it had made him susceptible to every tiny thing that Elena said and did. It was rare that he loved. And when he did, the feeling engulfed him. A tidal wave of emotion was crushing his soul.

That was his curse; to feel be condemned to feeling too much and to love too dearly when all he could do was bring darkness and chaos to the life of the one person who brought immeasurable light into his life.

He was cursed. A monster who deserved nothing.


	3. Unshakeable

**Set on Elena and Damon's first meeting. **

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Unshakeable

_I'm hungry. _It was the only concious thought that surged constantly through Damon Salvatore's mind as he strolled casually down the desolate winding road. Instantly, he dropped to the floor, lying on the cold tarmac face-up. He kept his eyes wide, fixing them on the open night sky that spread far and wide above him. Although he would never be able to say it out loud, he find the sky intriguing. So much open air. So much _freedom. _Humans, vampire and witches alike were bound to the prison that was earth. It had been a childish dream of his, over a century ago to be able to fly like a bird. The thought brought a tiny, almost unnoticeable smirk to his face. Children were stupid. Humans were stupid. Dreaming was stupid.

He caught himself then. No, dreaming wasn't stupid. Particularly when you had dreamed of one thing for an entire century and you were so close to getting it that you could taste it - taste her lips, soft warm against his as they claimed his soul in a passionate, open mouthed kiss. Feel her mouth move to his throat as her teeth grazed against the exposed skin, plunging into him as she fed like a child dying from hunger... The desire to feel that pleasure, the wonders of giving blood so easily and readily to the woman he loved was enough to take over his senses. The cold floor beneath his back melted away, his sight was ripped from him as all he saw was her, her, _her._ Everything, gone._  
_

Aside from the hunger.

It was still there. That incessant burn at the back of his throat was agonizingly relentless. The dry ache was the only thing that tugged him cruelly back to reality: he, Damon Salvatore, was lying in the centre of a lonely road, his limbs arranged in the spread-eagled fashion he had been taught to do it in, his shoulders twisted as if he had just been hit by some sort of vehicle. It was always enough. A twisted lump of body right in front of a driver that made the breaks squeal as the tyres skidded and screeched on the road, drawing to a halt just before him. Then, the driver would get out. He or she would rush to him, frantic and warbling as they patted themselves down trying to locate a cell phone. Damon would hear their blood pumping through their veins as adrenaline kicked in, smell the desperation and the desire to help clinging on their skin.

That's when he'd get up.

That's when he'd whet his appetite.

Feet scuffing carelessly across the road brought Damon back to reality. As his senses honed into the noise, he easily picked up the sound of blood pounding through the veins of a human. Breathing deeply, he listened carefully. The fluttery, fast breathing meant his victim was definitely female... female, and upset. Using the speed he had been blessed with when he had been cursed as a vampire, Damon propelled himself toward her. As he stopped, just short of her, his entire body numbed. For an instant, he felt paralysed.

Unable to stop himself, he let the gasp of recognition fall from his lips. "Katherine?"

She just looked at him, a vague expression of bewilderment and surprise unable to fully penetrate the lingering sadness that surrounded her. Brown eyes blinked at Damon, showing no signs of understanding. She just stood, long dark hair falling down her back, impossibly straight and shiny. "Um, no..." she said eventually, her voice trailing off. "I'm Elena."

"Oh. You... you just look exactly like-" Damon paused caught off guard. Squinting as he stared at her, he tried to work out how what he was witness could even be possible. "I'm sorry. You just really remind me of someone..." he half-smiled, more out of awkwardness than anything else. _Awkwardness? _He found himself internally laughing. Since when had anyone ever had the ability to make him, of all people, feel _awkward? _"I'm Damon."

"Not to be rude, Damon, but it's kinda creepy that you're out here... in the middle of nowhere." Elena gestured around her at the lone road surrounded by dense foliage. Damon took note of her slender fingers loosely holding onto a cell phone. It was odd, at how readily she displayed her emotions to a stranger. There was no pretence that he was used to seeing from materialising from what appeared to be thin air. She just outwardly admitted how jittery it made her feel.

"You're one to talk." He paused to smirk before adding in a sing-song, taunting tone of voice: "You're out here, all by yourself."

A snort of laughter exploded from Elena, all tension just dropping from her body as she flapped an arm, completely unconcerned. "It's Mystic Falls," she said matter of factly. "Nothing bad ever happens here."

Damon fought back the urge to laugh, but was unable to stop a maddening smile from fixing itself on his lips as a series of disjointed images flashed through his head: Katherine, Pearl, fires, fangs, screams filling the night air as John Gilbert hurried to round up the vampires...

As Damon resurfaced from his memories, Elena's eyes dropped awkwardly to her hand that was holding her cell phone. With a sheepish smile, she lifted the phone, presenting it to him. "Got in a fight with my boyfriend."

"'Bout what?" Damon asked, instantly intrigued. He caught himself, once again. Why was it that he even cared? He was supposed to be eating her, not making friends. Her uncanny resemblance to the woman he was heading into his old home to search for had him functioning all wrong. He was aware, that he shouldn't be doing what he was doing. But there was a wrenching motion that started in his gut and travelled firmly down his legs and to his feet, rooting him to the spot like an anchor. He didn't want to leave her. Not yet.

Again, Elena's eyes dropped as she spoke, shaking her head a little with each reason. "Life. The future..." she paused before adding in a slightly drawling voice. "He's got all mapped out."

Damon raised his eyebrows, pursing his lips. "And you don't want it?"

"I don't know what I want," Elena sighed, half-shrugging. Her brow creased in obvious frustration as her shoulders sagged in defeat. Damon's stomach churned as he observed her distress. For some reason, the urge to comfort her surged through him.

"Well that's not true," With a half shrug and a small smile, he took a step closer to her. "You want what everybody wants."

Elena cocked her head to the side. Her narrows slightly as her lips lifted at the corners, a beautiful and inadvertently seductive smile forming on her perfect features. "What? Mysterious stranger with all the answers..."

"Let's just say I've been around for a long time and learned a few things." Damon responded to her flirting nature, his face scrunching up as he nodded in an overly assuring way. He was enjoying it. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he was enjoying the company of another individual.

"So Damon. Tell me. What is it that I want?"

As her eyes settled on his, a strangely hypnotic feeling took over him. Damon couldn't work out what it was, or why it was happening. But it was. "You want a love that consumes you. You want passion, an adventure... and even a little danger."

Elena paused, unable to mask the fact that she was taken aback. Smugly, Damon continued to smile at her whilst he tried to work why she had him completely thrown. For a moment, he just let himself believe that it wasn't because of Katherine. Had he never seen Katherine before, would he be feeling the same way now? Forcing back the confusion, he just let himself hang onto the feeling that this stranger was giving him. "What is it that _you_ want?" Elena managed to regain her composure, countering him with a question that had him stumped.

Two minutes before hand, he would have said he wanted an eternity with Katherine Pierce. But this had happened. Faced with the love of his life's doppelgänger, he felt like everything was changing. Cogs and gears were clicking into place under the layers of flesh, blood, skin and muscle. He could _feel_ Elena's presence inside him, coursing and pulsing through his very core. It was certainly disconcerting. He'd even go as far to say frightening... but it was comfortable. Like she was supposed to be there, a presence of light and power that beamed through his very soul.

Then, with the sound of a car horn, the comfort, safety and pleasure that Elena brought was shattered. She turned her shoulders towards the headlights of the car that was speeding toward them, mumbling something about parents under her breath. Over come with affection, he stepped so he was right in front of her, their eyes clashing as they stared deeply into each other's faces. "I want you, to get everything that you're looking for. But right now, I want you to forget that this happened. Can't have people knowing that I'm in town yet."

He paused, stealing a few seconds of her face, guileless, innocent and completely pure just looking back at him, dazed. God, she was beautiful. "Good night, Elena."

And with that, he was gone, speeding through the night, detouring through the dense forest, letting the cold blast him, throwing off his jacket as he tried to blast away any of the warmth that she had brought him, for letting anything get under his skin was a way to make him vulnerable.

_But why does it feel like she's unshakeable?_


End file.
